May 13 Birthday

Famous Birthdays on May 13

• Daphne du Maurier (1907)

  English novelist known for Rebecca and other atmospheric gothic fiction, several adapted by Alfred Hitchcock.

• Harvey Keitel (1939)

  American actor known for collaborations with Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, including Taxi Driver and Reservoir Dogs.

• Stevie Wonder (1950)

  American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist and one of the most influential musicians in modern popular music, blind since shortly after birth.

• Robert Pattinson (1986)

  English actor known for the Twilight film series and later a wide range of art-house and blockbuster roles.

This Day in History

• 1846 — The United States formally declared war on Mexico, beginning the Mexican-American War.

• 1940 — Winston Churchill delivered his "blood, toil, tears and sweat" speech to the House of Commons, his first as Prime Minister.

• 1958 — Vice President Richard Nixon's motorcade was attacked by protesters during a goodwill tour of Caracas, Venezuela.

• 1968 — Roughly a million people marched through Paris in a general strike, the height of the mass protests and labor action of May 1968.

• 1981 — Pope John Paul II was shot and seriously wounded by a gunman in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City.

What May 13 Says About You

Rhetoric carries real weight on May 13. Churchill's first speech to the House of Commons as Prime Minister, delivered on this date in 1940, offered nothing but blood, toil, tears and sweat and became one of the most quoted political speeches of the twentieth century precisely because it promised no comfort — a bluntness that fits the grounded, no-nonsense side of Taurus rather than its softer, sensory reputation. Stevie Wonder, born on this date in 1950, took a different route to lasting influence, building a body of work so technically and emotionally dense that it reshaped what popular music could sound like, all while blind since infancy — a career built on a kind of sustained sensory attentiveness that runs deeper than sight. Daphne du Maurier, also born May 13, in 1907, wrote fiction so atmospheric that Alfred Hitchcock adapted several of her novels and stories, including Rebecca and The Birds, into some of his most enduring films. The date's historical record leans toward sudden violence more than most: the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square in 1981, the attack on Nixon's motorcade in Caracas in 1958, and the formal U.S. declaration of war against Mexico in 1846 all fall on May 13, a run of dates that undercuts any easy assumption that Taurus birthdays are uniformly calm. The May 1968 general strike in Paris, which brought roughly a million protesters into the streets on this date, adds a different flavor of upheaval — mass, organized, and ultimately reshaping French politics and labor law for years afterward. The numerology day number for the 13th reduces to 4, tied to structure and discipline, an odd pairing for a date this eventful but a real one for Harvey Keitel, whose decades-long career has been built on unglamorous, disciplined character work rather than leading-man flash. Robert Pattinson, born on this date in 1986, has spent the years since Twilight deliberately steering toward smaller, riskier films — a Taurus instinct toward controlling one's own trajectory rather than accepting the one handed to him. May 13's history argues for a birthday defined as much by resilience under sudden pressure as by any patient, steady build — a harder-edged read on Taurus than the month's calmer symbolism alone would suggest. Harvey Keitel, also born May 13, spent early years working with independent directors on low-budget projects before mainstream recognition followed, a patient buildup that mirrors the slow accumulation of institutional consequence running through so much of the date's political history. The Mexican-American War declared on this date in 1846 remains one of the more openly contested wars in American history even at the time, with a young congressman named Abraham Lincoln among those who publicly challenged the administration's stated justification for it.